Advocate Harish Salve told a Supreme Court constitution bench, which is thinking of framing guidelines for the reporting of court cases, that it was within the court’s powers to define the extent of freedom of speech and expression when it came in conflict with the right to life. Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia asked Salve on Wednesday: “If not guidelines, then what do we call them?” “This is a declaration of the law,”...

BANWARA, India – In the fall of 2006, Gita Devi was pregnant with her sixth child when her family fell on hard times. A severe drought made it more difficult than ever to find farm work here in India’s northeastern plains. The family couldn’t afford food. It was unable to get a government ration card to buy grains and rice at steep discounts, even though it clearly was poor enough to...

The Supreme Court on Thursday by a majority of 2:1 upheld the constitutional validity of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which provides for free and compulsory education to children between the age of 6 and 14 years and mandates government/aided/and non-minority unaided schools to reserve 25 per cent of the seats for these children. A Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice Swatanter Kumar...

Reservation will change their character, says Supreme Court The Supreme Court on Thursday held that the Right to Education Act would not apply to unaided minority schools. The majority judgment by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice Swatanter Kumar said: “Reservation of 25 per cent in such unaided minority schools will result in changing the character of the schools if the right to establish and administer such schools flows from the right...

All schools, barring unaided minority institutions, will have to set aside 25 per cent of their seats for disadvantaged sections in the neighbourhood, the Supreme Court ruled today. The top court settled the question by upholding the relevant clause in the right to education law, saying that “advancement of education is a recognised head of charity” and rejecting a slew of petitions filed by several unaided schools. Since the act deals with...